


Getting to Know You Again

by NevillesGran



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Eric's TBD RPG
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 18:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: A missing scene from the very much missing rest these poor people should have taken at some point in the last few episodes. Of course, not everyone needs as much rest while bouncing through time and space. So one old friend approaches another with an offer of a shared drink...





	Getting to Know You Again

**Author's Note:**

> Not to be That Person, but: First!!
> 
> (Thank you so much to everyone in Eric's TBD RPG campaign for just...playing such good Doctor Who. You really capture the spirit of the show I love. Particular shoutout here, of course, to Amy and Taliesin, and Eric who I suppose appears in this fic as the TARDIS.)

It was so “cute” how much lesser species needed to sleep. Like biology itself decreed that they have a march stolen on them once every 24 hours. The poor things _needed_ time travel, really, just to match pace. Ironic that they rarely achieved it unless some more powerful being granted them access—and even then, they couldn’t keep up.

Of course the Doctor slowed down to accommodate her pets—that is, companions. She wanted to be one of them, more often than not, so while the TARDIS flew at a snail’s pace to the last tear in reality, the Master had to track her down to her bedroom.

He knocked, four times for nostalgia’s sake. It made a lovely, rounded noise on the door’s Earth redwood, but nothing else happened.

“Come on,” he said, and knocked again. “All your little…people are asleep, and the Corsair’s in a Mood in the shooting gallery. Have a drink with me!”

When nothing continued to happen, he transferred the gin bottle to the crook of his opposite elbow, that hand already busy with a pair of glasses, and laid palm and cheek against the door. “Do let me in, dear,” he murmured to the oh-so-faint hum permeating the wood. “I only want to talk.”

The door clicked open and the Master permitted himself a smug grin as he followed its inward swing.

“You are impossible,” the Doctor said from the bed, where she was begrudgingly lowering a book to her lap. Only the flicker of her eyes towards the ceiling indicated that she was chastising the TARDIS rather than the Master—but then she lowered her sharp gaze to his and he felt the delight spread a little wider on his lips.

He deliberately looked away, scanning the room instead. The door was a good indicator of the decor—it was much more homey in here than the TARDIS’s minimalist corridors. Art Deco Revival with a dash of Proto-Dedalean, simple, sweeping curves to high wooden arches and one entire wall filled with nothing but window, or rather, a massive, perfect-definition screen currently showing the flowing Celestial Waterfalls of Beta-Ceta 5. The rest of the walls were taken up with bookshelves, and a walk-in closet that was certainly bigger on the inside. The bed was positioned so its occupant could see anyone who walked in, and her sonic screwdriver was the only thing on the small table beside her, save a photograph-sized screen like the one on the wall. It showed a tag-along he didn’t recognize, just now, a blonde in overalls.

The Doctor put her book away and got out of bed to frown at him properly. For all her presumption at rest, she’d done little more to dress for bed than shed her coat and scarf, both now hanging on the wardrobe.

“What do you want,” she demanded, arms crossed.

The Master put an injured hand on his chest, and waved the gin and glasses with his other. “I just thought you might like to talk, and perhaps share a drink. Like old friends?”

“Did you now.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s been so long. We both have new bodies. You’re in an entirely new dimension. Don’t you think we ought to get to know each other again? Find out what’s different, what’s the same? At least compare histories, in case something important is changed between your universe and mine.”

He wasn’t even lying, so the micrometer that her lips unpursed was particularly gratifying. “Well…”

“Like—” He took a seat on the bed, inviting her back down, juggling for a moment to pour a measure of gin into each glass. “What was the last battle in your Time War before you sent it careening through reality? How many times did we fight on Earth, while you were trapped with UNIT? Oh—” He laughed. “Did we still steal the President’s wife when we were 87? Do you remember the look on her _face_?”

The Doctor cracked a reluctant smile. “I’ve faced down Rassilon and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a President that furious and offended.”

Again the Master offered her the drink, and this time she took it, and sat beside him.

“See, I am trying to be helpful,” he said. “Sociable. ‘Good’, if that’s what you insist.”

It was the wrong thing to say to keep her smiling. The very temperature seemed to drop. But the Doctor continued to sip the gin.

“I hope you don’t think I’m actually going to trust you.”

“Oh, god no. But we should be able to work together, don’t you think?” He offered her an impish smile. “Would it help if you yelled at me some more, first? Tell me how _naughty_ I’ve been.”

“It would make me feel better to gag you,” she snapped. Now the temperature really did drop a degree and a half. The Doctor’s TARDIS was always very in-tune with her Time Lord.

He could never resist pushing her buttons. “Oh, do go on,” he breathed.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you." She put her gin on the bedside table to glare at him properly. "You do these dreadful things and you... you want me to come around and stare at the mess you've made and click my tongue in disapproval—and then not follow through on sending you to your room because, oh, you with those big eyes, you’ve learned your lesson, you want to ‘help,’ now.”

The rage simmering under her even tone could have powered several small suns. The Master could not have held back his smirk if all his future regenerations depended on it. He raised his glass in a toast.

He was too busy being pleased with himself for provoking her to dodge her shove to his chest—not hard, but unexpected, so only some hasty scrambling saved him from a terribly undignified collapse on the deep blue duvet. The gin was less lucky, and spilled everywhere.

“Excuse me—!”

“I will not.” She stood over him, spitting-mad and eyes flashing. “You use people. You use people like toys—and they are all my people, every single one of them. Every single person you've twisted, you've killed. The others may not have realized, but it's not difficult to calculate how many 'trials' you must have gone through before hitting on Cillian, and how many after him, just to be sure. In this universe and that one, my one; human and Sontaran and Peladonian and everyone else—”

The thing about the Doctor when she, or he as the case usually was, was angry, was that the universe _spun_ around her. The Master didn’t know any Time Lord more attuned to the Time Vortex, including himself and _maybe_ excluding Rassilon, and when she was angry, it showed. And he was the only one on this boat (lovely boat, charming boat) who could appreciate it: the temporal energy sparking in her eyes, in her voice; the way it snapped and eddied around her like a cat’s raised fur or a star’s flares building to a nova.

“I've wondered, you know, if you'd stop if I stopped caring, but we both know you _wouldn't._ We both know you just think it's fun, to _hurt_ people—”

It was, consistently, the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. The unthinking power of it was breathtaking. And it wasn’t just the Vortex, or her charming old half-broken TARDIS shaking around them—it was the Doctor, herself and her idealistic damn principles. There was no point more fixed than the Doctor’s righteousness, in any reality. And reality knew it. Reality _cowered_.

He must have thought it too loudly, or she could simply read him too well. The Doctor’s mask slammed back down. Quick as they began, the eddies eased, the flurries faded, and the TARDIS resumed her mostly-steady path through the slightly-lessened tides of time and chaos.

"Get out."

She didn’t even look at him, just stepped back and turned away, arms folded at the flowing loop of the Celestial Falls.

The Master didn’t move and the Doctor sighed, arms almost tight enough to hug herself. "I always try to talk to you. You just never listen."

All that beautiful rage wasn’t simmering under just a perfect mask: weariness, too, drowned the fire. No matter how long the Master ran, the Doctor always seemed to have a few years on him.

He pushed himself to his feet, dabbing with his handkerchief at the gin on his shirt. The bedspread he abandoned as a lost cause, and it served his old friend right.

"I'd thought," he said carefully, because if they are laying it all out in the open then he might as well, "that when you first recognized me, there was a flash of..."

It was difficult to say 'happiness', per se, and harder yet to say 'relief.' Not with the way temporal energy still clung to her, now slow and draping like a weary traveler’s cloak.

"You died in my universe," the Doctor said flatly. "Or, I think you did. You're certainly stuck in lock on the Time War. But you were trying to kill Rassilon when I last saw you, so I rather suspect you're dead for good this time."

"Ah. That may be useful to know. Thank you."

" _So_ happy to help."

She still wasn’t looking at him, but in the interest of honest intentions, he did his best to bite back the grin at her teflon-dissolving sarcasm.

Well, sort of his best. A modicum of his best. He tucked his damp handkerchief back into his pocket and left without further intruding on her patience, at least, with a grateful pat to the wall for the old girl letting him in in the first place. Always respect your host TARDIS, that was a rule to live by to the extent that the Master chose to follow rules.

He carefully did not think much about the fact that were he, Rassilon, and the Doctor in a room together, there was really only one reason he would risk his lives attacking that old monster. He'd already known, from the irritated "old friend" on Sontar and every scolding since, that this Doctor and her universe's Master had very much the same relationship as he'd always had with his Doctor. As constant as her principles, he supposed, and as equal parts exhausting and...

Well. Anyway. He adjusted his tie, even though he would be replacing it as soon as he got back to his room. No respect for a good bottle of gin, the Doctor, or at least as “good” as one could categorize the Corsair’s not-quite-hidden stashes. He was going to need another, for sure. This was going to be an even longer trip if he was drinking alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [ aunt_zelda ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda) for contributing a couple lines of dialogue, and [ moonsrain ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsrain/pseuds/moonsrain) for betaing.


End file.
